Lone Star is the trademark used by the toy
division of Die Cast Machine Tools (DCMT), a british company based in London.
This company was founded in 1939. Among their
first products, there are many guns and rifles, which were very popular at the
time because of the many films about Indians and Cowboys. It is said, that the
name of the toys comes from these products. They also manufactured hand-painted
toy soldiers, first in lead, later in plastic. These were mostly soldiers, indian
and cowboys although they also had licenses for popular characters like Popeye,
el Zorro or James Bond’s Thunderball.
Their most successful products were vehicles,
and there were vehicles in several scales made… starting with the classic 1/43
(similar to Corgi’s cars), 1/64 under the Impy series, and also in 1/85 with
the Tuf Tots.
The Tuft-Tots were already introduced in this
blog in entry #219,
this time we will focus on the larger scale models (1:43 for cars, other scales
for other vehicles), made to compete against Corgi and Dinky, but also against Matchbox
and other companies.
The first cars in this scale were manufactured
as early as 1956, in
a series called “Road-Master” (also “Road Master”). The first castings, for
example the bus in the pictures, were not very well done. The castings are not
very detailed. Note that this bus is made in two halves fit together.
The production of Lone Star Road Master series
was improved in the following years, with details like plastic windshields,
hand-painted head- and taillights.
Not everything improved. The nice aluminium
hubcaps with white plastic tyres were by the mid-60s replaced by one-part plastic
tyres (those in the pictures).
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This bus sold massively, since many tourist
that visited London
bought it as a souvenir. There were also a London Taxi available in this size. Because
of its popularity, this bus was manufactured during decades. This model seems
to be made by the early 80s, but I cannot give a precise year, so I will label
it as early 60s, when the first bus was released.
The same model was available in 1977 chromed,
as a souvenir of the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II (1952-1977), and also
with different stickers.
This model is one of the oldest toys I can
remember, and was probably bought by some relative on a trip to London.
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- Name: ROUTEMASTER BUS (#1259)
- Scale: Around 1:120 (?)
- Year: Around 1960
- Company: Lone Star (Great Britain)
- Size: approx. 4,5’’ or 11 cm
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